Which Direction for Schools of Education?

Overview & Synopsis

This document advocates a change in the structure of teacher education while considering the much-discussed view that schools of education may lose the function of educating teachers. Literature treating the failure of universities in educating teachers is reviewed. It is stated that many educators desire total movement of teacher education to a school center that is off the college campus and that is run by the public schools for the objectives of public education. The authors state that one of the motives for such a movement would be to seek a climate more conducive to change than the one that currently exists in teacher education. This paper stresses the need for schools of education to establish programs that are of the college but not in the college; programs that are in the public schools but that have combined staffs. The education of high school teachers is given as an example. For this new major, whether it is called "secondary education" or "secondary teaching", the location is a clinical setting in the public schools; the approach is performance- and product-based. (JA)